On the last day of the failed transportation referendum campaign, Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed downplayed his role in urging passage of a penny sales tax for highway and transit projects across the metro region.

“This isn’t about me,” Reed declared July 30 in a joint news conference with Gov. Nathan Deal at the Capitol. “It’s about us.”

But local political observers say Reed’s willingness to step into a leadership role on a controversial and — as it turned out — losing issue will raise his profile as a big-city mayor, even though the July 31 vote went overwhelmingly against the tax.

“He was willing to go all out on something that could hurt him,” said former Mayor Sam Massell, president of the Buckhead Coalition. “It was very courageous to put his political capital on the line.”

Reed’s championing of the transportation sales tax was no surprise. The General Assembly passed legislation two years ago setting the stage for the referendum after the former state senator successfully lobbied his ex-colleagues to support the bill.

“He has to his credit the establishing of cooperative relationships with the state government,” said Harvey Newman, a political science professor at Georgia State University. “That we even had this referendum was a product of his cooperation.”

But Reed didn’t emerge as the referendum’s most vocal advocate until two weeks before the vote. Perhaps frustrated by the business leadership-driven campaign’s refusal to release internal polling numbers at a time when independent polls showed the tax trailing significantly, he took it upon himself during a July 17 news conference to announce that the campaign’s own polls indicated the contest would be close.

One week later, the mayor traveled to Cobb County for a rally with former Gov. Roy Barnes, highlighting his strategy of reaching outside Atlanta to become a regional spokesman for the referendum.

Already popular with Atlanta’s business community, Reed’s efforts further endeared him to the region’s top executives.

“I think Kasim emerges from this looking as a stronger leader for having done this,” said Dave Stockert, CEO of Post Properties Inc., who chaired the business campaign for the referendum. “The business community certainly feels that way.”

Stockert and other business leaders who led the campaign lined up behind Reed late on July 31, after it was clear the referendum had lost, giving him center stage for what was essentially a concession speech aimed at shoring up disappointed volunteers. He reminded his audience that similar transportation votes in other metro areas failed the first time, only to pass on a second shot.

“This campaign’s not over yet,” Reed said. “The voters have decided. ... [But] I’m going to get up tomorrow morning and work just as hard to change their minds.”

Michael Leo Owens, a political science professor at Emory University, said Reed’s eagerness to go to bat for the referendum likely will lead to strong financial backing from the business community in next year’s expected re-election bid.

“The Metro [Atlanta] Chamber and the development and growth interests will be real supportive,” Owens said. “There’s no reason for any pro-development interest not to support the mayor for re-election.”

However, Reed’s leadership of the pro-referendum campaign also was marked by public arguments with black political and civil rights leaders that risked losing support among Atlanta’s minority voters. The mayor locked horns with John Evans, president of the DeKalb County NAACP, and state Sen. Vincent Fort, D-Atlanta, opponents of the transportation tax.

But former Democratic U.S. Rep. Buddy Darden, senior counsel with Atlanta-based McKenna Long & Aldridge LLP, said he doesn’t expect any damage Reed might have done with his political base to last long. Darden said opponents in politics one day are often allies the next.

“Fort and the NAACP are going to have to make peace with him,” Darden said. “He’s mayor, and they’ll need him for something else before you know it.”

For his part, Fort said he’s eager to put the campaign behind. “I don’t begrudge the mayor his policy position,” Fort said. “We just have to move forward.”

Newman said he doesn’t believe Reed’s prominent role on the referendum campaign’s losing side will affect his image, either in Atlanta or with Democrats in Washington, D.C., a city the mayor has visited numerous times to push for infrastructure projects, including a planned streetcar line in downtown Atlanta and the deepening of the Port of Savannah.

While Reed has the stature with the Obama administration to aspire to a Cabinet post if the president wins in November, local political observers don’t believe the mayor is interested.

Owens said most Cabinet secretaries toil in low-profile obscurity.

“Who wouldn’t want to be a big-city mayor?” he asked. “I would like to think the mayor is more interested in the details of government than the policy decisions that go on in Washington, D.C.”

— Contributing writer Maria Saporta contributed to this article.

Dave Williams covers Government

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